


Clutter

by stephanericher



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-25
Updated: 2015-11-25
Packaged: 2018-05-03 08:23:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5283647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stephanericher/pseuds/stephanericher
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The key clicks in the lock; she turns her head toward the sound and there he is, sweat sticking to the ratty old basketball shorts he must have had since middle school and a red t-shirt that she’s fairly certain is one of hers</p>
            </blockquote>





	Clutter

**Author's Note:**

> written for last year's himualex day

As messy and cluttered as the apartment has always been during the time Alex has lived there, it’s gotten even worse since Tatsuya moved in—his mismatched silverware has joined hers in the drawer and his DVD collection has been interspersed with hers in a row on the shelf below the television and now his half of the bed is always left unmade and  his clothes, too, are draped over the backs of chairs sometimes piling up along with hers until five or six sweaters and a t-shirt slide to the floor finally and one of them picks them all up. Taiga says the clutter invites mice and Alex tells him that he should relax because it’s not like they don’t seal all of their food away in airtight containers and the mice probably won’t eat an old pair of socks or yesterday’s newspaper (and if they do, it’s no real loss) and Tatsuya says that they’ll definitely start cleaning up but of course he never makes any attempt to.

It’s not as if they don’t know where everything is (well, the general area where it probably is) and it’s not as if Taiga or anyone else (Alex’s cousin Sofia in particular comes to mind, who’d visited once and declared Tatsuya “charming enough, but way too disorganized”) has to come and live with them, either. And it’s not as if they’re unhappy with things as they are—Alex supposes she can’t speak for Tatsuya, but then again why not? He’s still shifty and cagey sometimes, still a damn good liar (falsehoods still come easy to his lips like shells washed in with the tide) but he’s more open about his feelings, smiles more genuinely and speaks more freely. He’s not so fiercely independent as he once was, not as stubbornly determined to force his way up alone until it killed him, willing to give up the lead and let things go once in a while, willing to let others in—to let her in.

And still sometimes he leaves the milk out on the counter (not that it’s something she never does, truthfully). It can’t have been that long since he poured himself cereal and then went out on his morning run—he’s still out, anyway; she’d woken about half an hour earlier to a half-empty bed, his side rumpled and cool. Still, with the air conditioning on it’s probably still okay (that is, if it hasn’t already expired—even squinting she can’t make out the date on the side and she’s not going to go find her glasses for this). She picks it up; the carton is still cold and there isn’t enough condensation on the outside to make her hand slip. Alex opens it and sniffs; it certainly smells alright, so she takes a sip. Definitely still good.

She clears a stray spatula and a few cookbooks from a space on the counter and hops up onto the clear spot, leans back against the cabinets and runs a hand through her hair. It’s supposed to be even hotter today than it’s been, and they’re in the middle of a heat wave—even if it feels fine inside her air-conditioned kitchen in the middle of the morning, of course, but…she sighs.

The key clicks in the lock; she turns her head toward the sound and there he is, sweat sticking the ratty old basketball shorts he must have had since middle school and a red t-shirt that she’s fairly certain is one of hers (although she can’t really tell from this far away) to the contours of his frame—it’s not supposed to hit the triple digits until early afternoon, is it?

“Hey,” he says.

He locks the door crosses the short distance from the vestibule to the kitchen, and now that she can see the bleach stains it’s definitely her shirt—it suits him, even clinging to him like that.

“Milk?” she asks, raising the carton.

He shakes his head, opening the refrigerator and pulling out the pitcher of water. She shifts on the counter and leans her head back, intercepting him on his way to deposit his empty glass into the sink. His wrist is very warm and very sweaty, but she pulls him in between her legs and kisses him anyway.

“You need a shower.”

He snorts but doesn’t move away, and she makes no effort to push him away (he still tastes nice, vaguely like cranberries).

* * *

The air is still and positively stiff by mid-afternoon, dry heat or no it’s a hard adjustment to make as they walk down the street, sweat gathering between their joined fingers. By the time they make it to the courts they’re used to it, and they sit on the bench and watch the pickup game going on right now—high schoolers playing three-on—three. One of them has good court vision and one’s a beast at blocking but the others are mostly unremarkable. Tatsuya leans forward, squinting at them in the sun, trying to follow the trajectory of the ball and predict it—even now he soaks up basketball like an extra-strength paper towel soaks up water; even though it seems he should be oversaturated by now he somehow isn’t.

The game ends; the blocker walks toward them, leans forward against the chain-link fence, motions to the basketball on Tatsuya’s lap.

“You play?”

“Two-on-two?” says Alex.

The kid’s lip twists. “Sure.”

He’s underestimating them; they don’t need to say it to each other but they ready themselves anyway. Even though the blocker’s playing with the vision kid and all the others have left, there’s no way Tatsuya and Alex don’t have an advantage. The first few points are basically given, before the kids tighten up on defense. It’s more of a challenge than Alex had anticipated the rest of the way, but she also never has to doubt her and Tatsuya’s chances of winning. It’s no harder than usual to draw from the close to two decades they’ve known each other and played together to know where he’s going to be at any given moment even if she doesn’t know how the kids are going to try and block the lanes or screen them out; finding the right hole is the hard part and even then she’s sure exactly how to receive her pass—and much more often than not she hears the right friction of the basketball against his fingertips from a few feet away, watches him lift the ball and shoot it up in a perfect arc until it disappears and reappears (he’s been using that same trick shot for so damn long and it still works almost every time), arcing gracefully as his feet fall softly to the asphalt and then falling straight through the hoop.

And he passes back to her, firm and crisp and even and still evading the kids’ outstretched arms most of the time. Her shots are more haphazard, revolving rapidly around the rim more than several times before wobbling through or bouncing softly off the backboard, but no less accurate, and they concede very little on defense. It’s not long before the kids know they’re doomed, and after that it’s not much fun, especially with the way the sweat is making Alex’s glasses slip off every third step and the heat is stifling them all.

The kids play one-on-one after that and they stay and watch; his arm is loosely around her shoulders and her hand is on his knee and it’s definitely too hot for this much contact but that’s never been enough reason to stop them before, so why start now?


End file.
